Chada Katavi

Katavi National Park remains one of the greatest wildlife experiences of Africa. Miles from anywhere, it has an almost mythical status and, it’s thought, a greater density of mammals than any other Tanzanian reserve. Massed on the plains are the last great herds of buffalo in East Africa, up to 1000 head.

Rivers groan with hippopotamus, and crocodile. Almost everywhere you look there’s something grazing, bellowing, fighting, mating, hunting. Days on the hoof in Katavi can be wild beyond belief.

In this mega-beast land all animals need a really good place to hole up, and for a decade Man’s retreat has been Chada Katavi, hidden on a shady spit of acacias and tamarinds on the edge of the great Chada plain.

This is the place for the wildlife connoisseur, and the traveller who thinks the African bush can offer up no more surprises. Happily indulged, watching the elephants head out to water as dusk falls, you feel like one of the last great pioneers; binoculars in your hand, Africa filling your head.